The second Developer Preview build for Android 14 was released earlier today, and as always, there are plenty of new features and changes hidden under the hood. One such feature is the new Emoji Lab feature that lets you create a custom (or random) emoji wallpaper for your Pixel device, and another is the subject of this article: automatic confirmation of correct PINs. Yes, the feature that custom ROMs have had for years now is finally making its way into stock Android.
Digging through Android 14 DP2, I was able to show a new “Auto confirm correct PIN” toggle that appears when setting up a new PIN. This toggle does not appear by default in DP2, and the same feature does not currently appear to work on my device. However, it’s pretty clear what the feature is supposed to do given its description. There is a caveat that “confirming your PIN by clicking enter is more secure than using automatic confirmation”, but I’m sure those who use a PIN via password for convenience won’t mind this trade-off.
However, in order not to sacrifice too much security, the correct toggle for auto-confirm PIN will not appear if you set up a PIN that is less than 6 digits in length. Speaking of PIN length, when the feature flag is flipped to enable the “Auto confirm correct PIN” toggle, the settings also change the text that appears when setting up a PIN. Instead of just saying that “the PIN must be at least 4 digits”, it now adds “but a 6-digit PIN is recommended for added security.” (I can’t share a screenshot of any of this text or the page where the “Auto confirm correct PIN” toggle says FLAG_SECURE has been applied to these windows, which prevents me from taking a screenshot.)
It’s long overdue to recommend a 6-digit PIN instead of a 4-digit PIN, especially in light of the recent report from The Wall Street Journal Which highlights a big problem: Attackers can gain access to your Apple or Google account simply by seeing you enter your PIN, because that’s all it takes to reset the password on your account. If you are not already using a password instead of a PIN, I recommend that you change the screen lock. If you feel the password is too inconvenient, perhaps a longer PIN with Auto Confirm Correct PIN would be a decent compromise.
As I mentioned before, though, the “auto-confirm valid PIN” feature is not available by default in Android 14 DP2 (and currently it doesn’t work for me). It is possible that Google will remove this feature before the stable release later this year.
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